Gustavo Neffa
Partner & Director at Research for Traders, Economist & Professor
AI data centers need cooling, electricity and transmission, sustaining the case for Vertiv, GE Vernova and Quanta Services. Vertiv's sales rose 26% in the past year; its systems cool AI chips. GE Vernova is the go-to power trade for its gas turbines. Quanta builds the lines to data centers and has a record $53B backlog. x.com x.com x.comÂ
GE Vernova's turbines and grid equipment make it a clear winner from the AI data-center power crunch. Q3 equipment sales rose 42%, total revenue 27% and operating income 281% as margins expanded. Grade: A. x.comÂ
The Magnificent Seven look better than grid and electrical equipment stocks, which carry some of the most egregiously high valuations. That group spans power equipment such as GE Vernova and ABB, switchgear from Powell and Eaton, cooling and panels from Vertiv and nVent, plus modular nuclear, fuel cells and batteries. A failed breakout on Eaton's weekly chart would be a big blow to the AI trade. x.com x.comÂ
AI data centers are hitting a power wall, which favors builders of heavy power and cooling hardware over chipmakers alone. Co-packaged optics let racks pack far more compute, but optical clusters draw enormous current, so new campuses need gigawatts the grid cannot supply, and utility hookups take 5-10 years. Vertiv supplies liquid cooling, Eaton and Powell switchgear and transformers, GE Vernova gas turbines for on-site power, and Bloom Energy fuel cells that skip the grid. x.comÂ
Quanta Services and Eaton sit in the underpriced part of the AI power trade, the infrastructure between the generator and the rack. Vistra and GE Vernova are already consensus, and the constraint chain keeps moving: grid interconnect queues and transmission permitting are the real bottleneck before a single megawatt reaches a data center. x.comÂ
Vertiv's power and cooling gear is benefiting from the AI data-center build-out. Q3 net sales rose 61%, operating profit 90% and net income 92%. There is no more direct picks-and-shovels bet on AI infrastructure than Vertiv. Grade: A. x.comÂ
AI's electricity shortfall creates a massive opportunity for companies solving the power bottleneck. Morgan Stanley estimates a 32 GW US data-center power shortfall by 2028. Constellation Energy and Vistra are nuclear names, Bloom Energy in fuel cells, GE Vernova in power generation and Eaton in grid infrastructure. x.comÂ
Grid suppliers are winning the next AI bottleneck, because power must reach data centers through transformers, substations, switchgear and transmission the grid lacks. Transformer lead times stretched from 24 months in 2019 to five years, per HSBC, and PJM got 220 GW of generation applications by April 2026 versus 2.1 GW connected in 2025. The White House designated switchgear and substations defense-essential. Forgent, Eaton, Powell, Hubbell, nVent, Quanta, MYR, AMSC, GE Vernova and Itron fit. … Show more
AI data-center spending should reach chips first, then racks, power and cooling, benefiting Nvidia, AMD, Vertiv, Bloom Energy, Credo, Marvell, Lumentum and Micron. BofA forecasts the global data-center market at about $1T in 2026, $2.1T in 2028 and nearly $3T by 2030, a 37% annual rise; roughly 80% of a new AI site's $57M per MW cost goes to servers, networking and storage. x.comÂ
On-site power management would help Vertiv tackle a major AI data-center bottleneck. Its planned acquisition of UtilityInnovation Group would add that expertise alongside its power and cooling equipment. x.comÂ